Iowa Farmboy meets Southern Belle, girl finishes college and moves from Georgia to Iowa to be closer to boy, boy marries girl, boy's job takes them both to Belo Horizonte, Brasil. One year later they have a baby (Gabriela Marina), another year passes and they move back to Iowa. A few months later they have a 2nd baby (Lilian Scarlett). The 3rd girl (Makayla Jasmine) joins the family a couple years after that. Boy continues job with a construction equipment maufacturing company in Burlington, Iowa; girl attempts to balance being a stay at home mom while working as a birth doula and childbirth educator.

We laugh a lot, travel as often as we can, and try to enjoy every moment of the craziness that is our lives. Thanks for joining us on the journey!

Thursday, July 3, 2008

Chile - Part III

So, back to our regularly scheduled programming after a quick little blogiversary party yesterday.

On Sunday (June 22) of our trip to Chile, we decided to take a bus over to the coast. It was a cheap and easy 1 1/2 hour bus trip to Valparaíso.

We passed by lots of vineyards on the way.

Valparaíso is a working class port town built into the steep hillsides. It is known for it's colorful houses, for it's many rickety cable-pulled trolleys up the steep hillsides, and for an abundance of art on the walls along somewhat-scary alleyways. After spending a few hours climbing the hills of Valparaíso, we decided to take the train over to Viñadel Mar, the neighboring city. This city is considered more of a beach town. (Although, maybe we are just too spoiled, but we thought the beach left a lot to be desired.)

There was a really pretty hotel and casino on one end of the beach, and we thought we might check it out and drop a couple thousand Chilean Pesos while we were there. (Calm down, that's less than 5 bucks people.) This is also the first casino I've ever known (not that I know a lot of casinos, but we did take a vacation to Vegas in 2006) to charge you a fairly hefty cover charge so that you can go in and give them your money. Needless to say, we only saw the casino from the front doors.

After that, there wasn't much else to do so we decided to play with the camera.

This is a shot of the very rare eskimo-mermaid. A very strange breed indeed. Why are pictures so much more fun when they aren't square with the horizon? I feel like I'm breaking a rule, coloring outside the lines. I don't know why, but I prefer to take pictures crooked sometimes. I'm a rebel like that.See? Basically the same picture as above, but not nearly as much fun. Both towns were pretty dead while we were there. It was just the locals out and about. I hear it is quite the happening place during the summer time. Which I guess makes sense. Beach. Summer. Yeah, most people don't go to the beach to wear heavy coats, I suppose.

Also, I have been chastised for not letting you know how the softball tournament went last weekend. Well, we played four games. We were clobbered the first two. We came close to winning the third. And we smoked the last team we played. Eric played shortstop all four games and had a really good weekend. In our last game, he hit another out of the park homerun bringing in two runners. Once again, it was the only out of the park homerun by our team. Yeah, that's my baby! I only started and played in the last game and batted quite well. Have I mentioned that last game was the only game we won? Now, I'm not saying it's necessarily connected, but um, well, that is the way it went down. I mean, what's a team without their all-star right fielder anyway, right? ;)